Camp For Show, Putt For Dough

By Calvin Trillin

(TIME, July 28) -- Liberated from having to take his family on vacation
wherever it would do him the most good electorally, President Clinton
decided to go back to Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where, as we
used to say when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, he can play
golf with his rich friends.

Dick Morris has written that for a couple of summers, the
Clintons went West because a Morris survey had found that voters
would look more kindly on a vacation that included hiking and
camping out. Given my own camping experiences, the way I would
have interpreted those findings was that American voters were
saying, "If I have to try to sleep on the hard ground while
being eaten by mosquitoes, why shouldn't he?"

So poor Clinton gave up the summer-vacation spot he liked and
apparently spent at least one night in a tent. My sympathy for
his sacrifice was limited. I spent precisely twice that many
nights camping out with the kids in tents, and I'm still waiting
for the electoral payoff.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased to see that the "permanent campaign"
is over and Clinton is unshackled from the tyranny of the polls.
Not having to run again, he can go back to Martha's Vineyard,
which is obviously the place that a Dem-ocratic President up for
re-election should have avoided from the start: for years the
Vineyard has been known as the summer home of intellectuals and
academics and journalists and entertainers who are liberal in
their politics, and it has also been known as the single most
difficult place in the entire country for a non-property owner
to get to the beach.

The combination of liberal politics and high gates is not
surprising in beach communities, where the bones of American
society tend to show through as property lines. In a well-off
summer community, a property-owner's views on affirmative action
or foreign aid have nothing to do with where he stands on such
issues as three-acre zoning or who should be eligible for
beach-parking permits.

Unlike President Eisenhower's golfing partners, the people
President Clinton will play golf with in Martha's Vineyard may
be rich from movie deals or from Washington law firms rather
than rich from CEO salaries, but they're still rich. The voters
are aware that none of those guys are lined up at a national
park in August, waiting for their turn to sleep on the ground.

When Clinton went West, he managed to find a golf course. In
Morris' view, press pictures of Clinton on the links negated all
the good done by pictures of the President around the campfire.
Golf still has a strong association with rich people--although
as a practical matter, the people sitting around a campfire with
a vacationing President are also likely to be rich.

I realize that every Administration tends to make me nostalgic
for the Administration that preceded it, but at this time of
year, I do find myself missing George H.W. Bush, who was without
tension in matters such as where one should summer. He went to
Kennebunkport, Maine, where he had always gone. And there he
played golf with his rich friends.